University of South Carolina Libraries
12 THE LUTHERAN VISITOR HINTS OH SERMONIZING. Written for Young: Preachers. From Preachers Journal. ‘ ‘At church, with meek and unaffected grace, Ilia looks adorn’d the venerable place; Truth from his lips prevailed with doubt’s to sway. And fools who came to scoff remained to pray. ’ * I. Necessity of Preparation. It can hardly be disputed that many preachers say things in their sermons every Sunday which if taken down word for word, and submitted to them afterwards, wonld surprise them very much; and probably each of them would be inclined to say soinethng like this: “What! Do yon mean to tell me I talk such trash as that! Sore ly I can never have said anything of the sort. I may not be clever, bnt I am not fdolish enough to talk snch nonsense.” Nevertheless, it wonld be quite true that he had preached just “such trash as that.” Why is it, then, that so many preachers say things in the pnlpit which, if repeated to them some time after, they conld scarcely be lieve they had ever ottered f Doubtless the chief reason is that they do not pay sufficient attentidn to the preparation of their sermons. This neglect is something against which the yonng preacher cannot be too mnch on his guard, for few things tend more to mar his efforts at being useful. He should re member that a sermon worth listen ing' to does not spring np spontan eously in the mind without pre vious study,nor will it naturally fall from his lips in.well turned peri ods unless great pains have been bestowed upon its composition. The greatest preachers of ancient or of modern times most, as is evident from the ; courses, have spent mnch tim n vished great care npon the s *eparation; and this should surely oe a lesson to the yonng preacher who would not have his sermons of the most eph emeral character, always to pre pare carefully, but particularly at the beginning of his career. In deed no matter what a man’s call ing may be, his snecess depends greatly on the spirit and the man ner in which he commences. Care lessness at the outset is almost enough to doom him to failure. This is especially true of the preacher; and therefore he should never allow any obstacle, unless it be insuperable, to interfere with the preparation of bis sermon for . Sunday. Something else is almost certain to demand his attention; bnt unless, it be of the utmost im- ~ portance, such as visiting the sick or dying, bis weekly sermon should have his first attention. No matter how obscure his field of labor or how uncultivated bis congregation, he should never say to himself that as he is stationed in some ont-of the-way place, where the people are neither very clever nor cultured, he need not be par ticular about the sermons he gives them; for, besides the wrong spirit by which snch a thought is prompted, the preacher should re member that in almost every con gregation there are two or three who are above the avearage—the teacher, the doctor, the lawyer and possibly a few others—and these, rather than the most uncultivated, are those whom he should take as the intellectual standard of the people to whom he preaches. Not forcing the higher to come down, but raising the lower, should be his object. Moreover, he ought to have snch a respect for bis work, —not to mention his love of it— and such a respect for himself on account of his office as either to give up preaching altogether or else prepare his sermons as well as he possibily can, no matter who are to hear them, or even though they should never be preached at all. It is said that the very best of Cicero’s orations against Cata- line was never delivered ;and many a sermon, thongh very good when first prepared and preached, has been revised and rewritten half a dozen times until it came up to the preacher’s conception of what it ought to be, thongh, for anything he knew at the lime, it might never be preached again. A really good builder, one who takes pride in bis work, one who knows that he can do a piece of work as it ought to be done, will, if called on (o erect a bouse in the ice-bound re gions of Labrador, or on the path less prairies of Minnesota, or amongst the almost inaccessible wilds of the Rookies, try to do as well, will be jnst as particular about every part of it as if he were building it in the most fashionable quarter of such a city as New York or London. In fact it is easier for snch a man to do a good piece of work than a bad piece of work. So should it be with the preacher, so indeed it is with the conscientious and enthusi astic preacher, no matter how plain his people may be; and whilst be is very careful that bis sermons shall not be much beyond the aver age ability of his congregation, he takes as great pains with them as if they were to be preached to an audience of the highest culture. Indeed it is more difficult to pre pare sermons for the former sort of congregation than for the latter. But, above all, no matter where he is stationed, whether in the city or in the backwoods, the preacher should never forget, but always realize, that he is an ambassador for the King of kings; and once throughly imbued with this belief, he will think, no troubles too great, no time too precious, to be be stowed npon the preparation of the message he has been commissioned to deliver, so that its meaning can not be mistaken by those who hear it, and that it may prodnee the de sired effect. Let g preacher, at the outset of his career, be earless about his ser mons, and he will soon form a slov enly habit of thinking, jaet as a slovenly habit of thinking leads to a slovenly habit of speaking; the hypothesis in the one ease be comes the predicate in the other as legitimately and as trnly as in any two converse propositions in Euclid’s Elements. In this state of things it cannot be long before snch a man’s sermons will be but little better than a jumble of stale re-bashes of what has been said by somebody else, or an unconnected string of inspired platitndes, or a confused mass of pions twaddle; and then farewell to success. It is re lated of the famons Daniel Web ster that he once refused to speak in favor of a certain measure be- cause he had received only a fort night’s notice; and when the de putation that had been sent to wait on him pressed him to accede to their request, stating that even a few words from him would, on ac count of his great reputation, be almost enongh to seeure the success of the measure, he replied some what in this fashion: “Gentlemen, you are very kind to pay me such a compliment, for which allow me to thank you. But from the com mencement of my public life up to the present moment I have never yet spoken npon any subject with- being thoroughly prepared. Such has been my invariable rule, and I have never broken it. In this way I have built up the reputation you are kind enough to speak of, and I am not going to endanger it January g, 1902 now by pnrsuinga different course. I am sorry to refuse you, bnt I can not prepare in a conple of weeks such a speech as I ongbt to make on the measure you wisn to have carried.” If snob a man was so careful not to speak npon even a secular subject without due pre paration, how careful the young preacher should be before address ing an audience upon a topic of mnch greater importance. There fore, impromptu preaching should be most religiously eschewed. After carefully preparing his ser mons for several years the preacher may, in an emergency, venture to preach without special preparation ; and if he is more than ordinarily clever, he may, even under such circumstances, snooeed in preach- < ing a very good sermon. But the ' habit of preachiog extempore is a vicious one; and, whatever confid ence it may show in one’s own fan cied ability, it certainly shows a gnat want of respect for one’s hearers. What right has any preacher to offer his congregation a erode and undigested mass of very inferior thought, devoid of systematic arrangement and pre sented in a slovenly manner! Who is the young preacher, fresh from the seminary, that he should attempt to teach people, many of whom may be old enough to be his parents, npon subjects of the highest character and of the great- importance, without having first made the best preparation m his power! His experience and bis un consciousness of a lamentable lack of modesty are the only things which can save him from being justly charged with colossal im pudence. If great preachers in past days, such as Bossnet and Bourdalone, Taylor and Berkely, BlairandChalmers, never preached extempore sermons unless absolute ly necessary, is there any reason why young and experienced men should do so now! It is as trne of preaching as of some other things, that “fools rnsh in where angels fear to tread.” It may jnst be remarked here that extempore preaching does not necessarily mean preaching without a manu script, but preaching withontprop er preparation. Many a sermon ' preached without a manuscript is anything bnt extempore; and in deed one can easily understand that many a manuscript sermon may be virtually an extempore sermon. A duty is not to be shirked be- eause it is disagreeable.